1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to apparatus coexistence, and in particular, to the provision of allowed channel information from sources in addition to a centralized database.
2. Background
Wireless communication technology continues to proliferate. As more and more apparatuses enter the marketplace, additional bandwidth must be made available to support their operation. Support for the expansion of operation within exclusive bandwidth (e.g., frequencies reserved for cellular communication) may just be a matter of communications providers buying the rights to additional reserved bandwidth. However as the total amount of available bandwidth is finite, it is getting increasingly difficult to reserve bandwidth to support emerging apparatuses. Unlicensed bandwidth provides a possible solution, but the provision of additional bandwidth in public use frequencies has been more problematic due in part to the growing number of devices operating in this area (e.g., peripheral devices such as headsets, keyboards, external storage, etc). In addition to the frequencies that are already available for unlicensed short-range wireless operation, U.S. regulators are now engaged in the reallocation of certain frequencies that were previously reserved for television (TV) broadcasts. While such reallocation may provide needed bandwidth for supporting short-range wireless communication in devices such as mobile handsets, the operation of new and legacy devices in the same space is not without its obstacles.
For example, the fact that certain frequencies in available spectrum are currently unused and may be reallocated for unlicensed short-range wireless communication does not eliminate all of the legacy operators (e.g., AM/FM radio, TV, etc.) that may still be active in the same, or nearby, frequencies. In this regard, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has decided that while TV white space (including frequencies that were previously reserved for TV channels but are not being currently used) may be reallocated for unlicensed broadband use, the apparatuses communicating in the unlicensed spectrum must still respect (avoid interfering with) any legacy operations. Active sensing is required as the frequencies used by legacy systems may vary geographically, resulting in different ranges of the spectrum being available in different areas. So, in addition to avoiding potential interference that may be caused by the many apparatuses interacting in the unlicensed bandwidth, the same apparatuses must also operate in accordance with the rules prohibiting interference with legacy apparatuses.